As we make it to the official halfway point of the story (yay!), Sirena makes a drastic move. Grizzie surprises with one of her own, taking them both on a whimsical afternoon truly worthy of a slacker film.
There’s a lot going on here (it’s a meaty step that involves a few scenes) but it sets the rest of the film into motion.
THE SCENE
INT. Feel-Good Cafe and Creamery. Backroom. Day.
ANDY puts his fingers to his mouth and whistles.
ANDY Huddle!
Like a marine, PACO quickly puts a box into place and stands at attention. SIRENA and GRIZZIE stroll over.
GRIZZIE (whisper to Sirena) How’d it go?
Sirena hesitates.
SIRENA They had decent lasagna.
Grizzie eyes her, worried.
Andy pulls up a photo of Sirena--she looks like she smells something awful--with a plaque that reads “employee of the month.”
ANDY This week’s honor goes to Sirenita!
Sirena freezes like a deer in the headlights while other workers applaud politely. She locks eyes with her portrait version, as if looking into her own wretched, unrecognizable soul.
Paco pats her on the back, beaming.
PACO Welcome to the club.
Andy hangs her photo next to rows of identical Paco photos.
He turns to face his team.
ANDY It’s been such a joy to watch you grow and mature, Sirena. And now that you have this momentum, I can’t wait to see how you level up.
SIRENA (blurts) I quit.
ANDY You what?!
Silence in the room.
Grizzie leans over to her, alarmed.
GRIZZIE (whisper) What are you doing?
SIRENA (whisper, ashamed) I can’t do this anymore.
GRIZZIE But your van.
Sirena addresses the room.
SIRENA Thanks for everything. I’m sorry.
She walks away to her locker, fighting back tears.
Grizzie looks at the row of Paco photos. Then at Sirena, gathering her crockpot. Then back at Andy.
GRIZZIE You know what? Me too.
Sirena looks at Grizzie, stunned. So does Andy.
ANDY You too?
Grizzie stammers, but she clearly feels a rush.
GRIZZIE Yea.
She runs over next to Sirena and quickly stuffs her bag with her own locker belongings.
SIRENA Have you gone nuts?
Grizzie grabs her hand, leading her out of the cafe.
She whoops as they exit, accidentally bumping a stack of coffee bags and knocking it over. Paco’s portraits all tilt.
GRIZZIE Sorry!
Ext. Feel-Good Creamery and Cafe. Backlot. Day.
Grizzie and Sirena power walk away from the café.
SIRENA What was that?
GRIZZIE How much do you have for the van?
SIRENA Huh?
GRIZZIE How much have you saved?
SIRENA I don’t know, like 600?
GRIZZIE I’ll cover the rest.
SIRENA Huh?
GRIZZIE I’ll take you home, and since I paid a bit more, I’ll keep the van and take a little gap year, deal? All we need is to grab our money from the house.
She’s stopped by a thought.
GRIZZIE Hopefully while my mom sleeps.
SIRENA You sure?
Grizzie opens her coat pocket, revealing a bag of coffee from Feel-good.
GRIZZIE (giddy, wide grin) I swiped it when I “bumped” into the coffee shelf.
SIRENA I don’t recognize you!
Grizzie leads her away.
EXT. Downtown coffee shop patio area. Day.
Sirena and Grizzie sit at a wobbly outdoor table. Grizzie pours steaming water into two mugs of the stolen coffee with Sirena’s crock pot warming obleas between them.
SIRENA Genius.
GRIZZIE Takes one to know one.
They sip leisurely, observing commuters. People check their phones, grab coffee, and join a river of brisk walkers.
SIRENA The herd migrates for their fuel.
GRIZZIE Like salmon.
Sirena takes a slow bite of oblea.
SIRENA Thank you for this.
Grizzie, also relaxed, nods at her.
They close their eyes and take it all in.
PACO (o.s.) There you are!
They jump.
GRIZZIE Jesus, Paco.
SIRENA Did you quit too?
Grizzie cackles.
GRIZZIE Are you kidding? His life would be meaningless.
PACO Andy gave me the afternoon to talk sense into you two.
SIRENA That’s not gonna happen, but here.
She pulls out a chair.
He sits down and she serves him some coffee. He looks uncomfortable but settles in.
PACO No reason not to smell the roses. Especially when I got the privilege of having this great company all to myself.
He immediately straightens up as a COFFEE SHOP WORKER approaches.
COFFEE SHOP WORKER Are you seriously making your own coffee here?
SIRENA (lazily, annoyed) Oh, here we go.
GRIZZIE We still have 10 minutes before he calls the cops. Take your time.
She pours everyone a little more coffee.
SIRENA What’s the plan now?
GRIZZIE Killing time while avoiding my mom’s wrath.
Sirena nods. Silence.
GRIZZIE Any ideas?
Paco lights up.
PACO Actually, yes.
EXT. Disc-Golf Course. Day.
On a tee, Paco holds a disc in front of the girls and LIONEL, who casually emulate him using their own discs.
PACO You don’t want a grip lock. You want to hold your disc loosely, then let your arm flow as you pullllllllll.
He starts to smoothly move his arm back and forth in front of his body. Grizzie and Sirena look at each other, smirking.
Lionel pulls a speaker from his cargo shorts.
LIONEL How about a little music?
He puts his speaker on the ground and starts to fiddle with it.
Paco keeps measuring his shot and form.
GRIZZIE Jesus Christ, just toss it already.
PACO Patience.
When he finally goes to throw, Lionel’s speaker BLASTS heavy metal music.
Paco jerks his release and almost takes Grizzie’s head off with the disc--she has to duck to avoid it.
GRIZZIE What the hell dude!
CUT TO:
Paco monitors Sirena as she’s about to throw a disc. He gets behind her, and grabs her arm.
PACO Relax. Don’t over-grip.
Sirena slaps his hands away.
SIRENA You don’t overgrip.
Paco pulls away, bashful.
PACO You ever think you’d be happier with some guidance and support?
SIRENA (sarcastic) What do you mean? Zoe’s an amazing mentor.
PACO I mean more like...from a boyfriend?
SIRENA Good idea. I want two, actually.
Paco goes blank. Sirena sees something in a trashcan and walks to it.
PACO Two boyfriends?
Sirena pulls out a plastic lid from the trash.
SIRENA Yup. And they have to be each other’s boyfriends too.
She blows some old food off the lid, spins it at the disc golf basket and sinks the shot.
SIRENA Much better. Exact same tech!
Paco stands stunned, trying to decide whether he’s offended, jealous, or aroused.
EXT. Disc-Golf Course. Night.
The four of them gather by the van. Sirena perches on the open back doors, monitoring the crockpot’s rice and beans. Paco rests his head by her lap, close but not quite touching.
Grizzie and Lionel share a blanket on the grass next to a disc golf basket.
Back at the van, Sirena zones out staring at the disc golf basket, with the steam from her rice and beans rising in front of it. Paco rests with his head near her lap.
Suddenly, she hears the laughter and chattering of a small town and the basket transforms in front of her into the fountain of a town plaza. She sees cobblestones, lush greenery, and colorful houses. The steam remains, but it comes from a large pot of beans in the yard of a tiny home. SIRENA’S GRANDMOTHER stirs it and waves at her.
She serves Sirena a bowl of rice and beans. Sirena takes in the smell, smiling, lost in the memory of Ciudad Montes.
PACO You good?
He’s offering her a paper cup with her rice and beans in it.
PACO They were getting a little burnt.
SIRENA Yeah. I’m good.
She eats some of the rice and beans, still looking wistful as the sounds of the city return.
SCENE NOTES
The disc golf setting was originally a dance club.
Instead of weirding Paco out with her comments, Sirena did so by grabbing his face and trying to make him kiss Lionel while they’re all dancing in a group, which sets off Paco on a tantrum.
That was inspired by a friend trying to do that to me a couple years ago, and me finding it not just hilarious but very Sirena.
HOWEVER: another friend informed me that apparently this exact thing happens in Zendaya’s movie Challengers and there was no way that this wasn’t going to look like a brazen rip off of the film.
So I changed the interaction, and in the process tried to find a setting that was more slacker and a little less overdone.
Funny enough, Sirena’s “two boyfriends” line is from the same person that tried the kiss move. Some people are just amazing inspiration for cool movie moments.
Like our previous interview scene, the “salmon commuters” coffee scene is also one of the oldest in this story. It struck me one morning when watching suited people downtown bunched up at a crosswalk, each with coffee in hand. I was among them, sadly not at a cafe relaxing and enjoying the view.
I’ve always remembered my mom, when we first got here, ranting about people chugging coffee while running somewhere (I think she does that now too, though).
It’s a very cultural thing, the different approaches to drinking a coffee.
Anyway, this little vignette probably doesn’t NEED to be in the story, but it’s always nice to have a whimsical scene to serve as a breather for the audience. Especially because we’re making a slacker film! Unproductive scenes and afternoons are what we’re all about!
When I finished writing this scene, I noticed I already had 90 pages at this point in the story, up from 60 before. At roughly one minute of screen time per page, that is way too much.
My first thought was to finish the draft and deal with the cutdown later, but I couldn’t deal with how much it bothered me to know I may have a 3 hour draft on my hands.
So before moving on, I went back and cut down, especially around act 2A.
I considered retroactively noting my edits on the past scenes posted here, crossing out what I cut, to give you a sense of how the story has evolved.
However, that would make the story visually rough to follow for someone starting from scratch.
So in this blog you get the second draft, not a final one, in all its bloat and glory! (that also hopefully gives you an incentive to see the actual movie to see how the story ended up evolving)
Antiwork content of the week: The Disappearance of the Public Bench
Since in this sequence we see our characters trying to relax in various (semi) public spaces, this essay on The Disappearance of the Public Bench is apropos. This is a whole ‘nother essay, but I’ll just say that I find our society’s increasing phobia of loitering to be abrasive and sad, with increasingly smaller spaces where you either have to be a paying customer or keep moving.
This particular line from the essay points out how absurd this has become:
“To stop homeless people from sitting or lying down, the authors implied, the hall deprived almost everyone of a place to sit.”
You could make the argument that the entire canon of slacker films is meant to defend the right to loiter and enjoy a slacker afternoon without having to make or buy anything.
These dispatches are part of “Sirena’s Scenes,” a special BQE section with installments of our slacker film script accompanied by interesting pieces of antiwork-adjacent content.
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